Coaching international teams

Most of us remember a time in our life when we were part of a group where everything seemed just right. A team that is ‘right on task’ can be so exhilarating, when the whole team is much more than the sum of its individual parts.

Sadly, the opposite often happens. Work isn’t done, time is wasted, competition gets in the way, games are played.

Working in a team with different personalities can be complex.  When varying cultures and time zones are thrown into the mix, it becomes far more so.

How complex is your team?  Please click here to complete our short questionnaire.

Nomadic specialises in converting team complexities into advantages by providing brief, focussed coaching for complex international and geographically-dispersed  teams.

Diverse teams

*André Laurent, Insead
This graph shows that diverse teams tend to either under- perform or outperform mono-cultural teams. Nomadic team coaching challenges complex and diverse teams to use their differences to their advantage , performing better than the average mono-cultural team.

When could coaching help your team?  Here are some typical scenarios.

• A geographically-dispersed team meets up in one place annually. It’s a good opportunity to explore increasing effectiveness, and spend time getting to know each other better.
• A new manager to the team would like to get team members together to conduct a SWOT analysis and plan the team’s immediate future.
• A team has undergone a lot of change recently, with people moving on and new members joining. How to adjust and re-group?
• There has been irritation and even conflict in a team recently, not all of it beneath the surface. If this continues, the team’s output will suffer and internal clients will start to notice.
• Client needs have changed, externally and internally. The team needs to refocus in order to deal with this.
• Key systems have been drastically changed, or replaced. Team members need to explore how they will work together with the new systems.

Nomadic offers a simple, effective process to:

• define the deliverables for team coaching
• design a team event (involving team members in the design wherever possible)
• deliver the team event, and support implementation of changes.

Previous Nomadic team coaching assignments include:

‘Transition’ sessions: supporting a team and its new manager to make a smooth transition to a new situation.‘Our team will have more effective communication which is directly profitable in how we deal with customers.’  (British/Dutch petrochemical firm)

Implementation of results from an employee survey. This resulted in a team event off- site with all team members taking responsibility for improving the working climate.
‘I expect we will experience more understanding of each other during our team meetings.’ (South African mining company)

Coaching a senior management team to defuse conflict.
‘Fredrik was very innovative in his methods of getting us to the root of the matter.’ (Luxemburg Bank)

Facilitation of a team event for a large group of scientists.
‘After this event, I will open up more.  Ask more questions.  Be more conscious of what I am doing.’  (European non- profit organisation)

Coaching a start-up team: ‘Fredrik is a very good facilitator. He did not impose his agenda on us and was able to move where we needed to go’.(HR consultancy, the Netherlands)

Testimonials

Letting people express themselves and helping people in a very sensitive way. (Petrochemical company, Oman)

Fredrik was very supportive and adaptive to a questioning HR audience. (Business school, Belgium)

Inclusive, made all participants take part. (Petrochemical company, Nigeria)

The team coach from Nomadic was sensitive to emotional issues and group dynamics. (Electronics firm, UK)